Did I Hear
by MinionRipley
Summary: Some time after arriving in Kirkwall, Marian Hawke stumbles across a delicious voice, and then she keeps stumbling across it, until she eventually stumbles into its owner. Things develop from there. Written for a kink meme request.
1. Chapter 1

Kinks/Warnings: F!Hawke/Fenris pairing, voice.

(Posted on the DA kink meme on 8/19/2013. Posted again here with some minor edits.)

Did I Hear

_Chapter One_

The first time Marian Hawke heard it, she'd been in the Lowtown market, tracking down a contact Meeran had given her for a job – hopefully her _last_ job with the man. It was late afternoon, and she was tired, hot, and sweaty from a day spent tromping through every street in a half-mile radius and then again because she'd gotten turned around. And she _still_ hadn't found the contact.

But the moment she heard it – that voice, that wonderful, sonorous voice that sent her head spinning and a heat simmering between her thighs – it was as though all of that melted and drained away.

It was the low, rich timbre of a man, quiet yet loud enough to carry through the bustling crowd, slipping into her ear like velvet and making her shiver. At first she'd thought she'd imagined it, but, no, there it came again. And that time she noticed its roughness, a certain husky quality that seemed to suggest its possessor had just rolled out of bed after a hard night. Or a night spent in more intimate matters. She shivered again.

"I am telling you," the lovely voice said, "I paid quite handsomely for this just the other day, and this morning it-"

"Have you wandered off again?" Carver cut in. He stood several paces ahead of her, looking back with an arched eyebrow and a tightness around his mouth that said without speaking, _Oh no, not this again._ She knew that was what it meant; she'd seen it enough times.

Marian rubbed at an ear with a frown. "No, I haven't."

"Have, too." Her brother heaved a sigh. "We're not going to find that contact before sundown if you keep drifting off like that."

"Oh, give me a break," she retorted. "It was just the once."

"So you _were_, then."

This time she gave a sigh. She glanced to the west, peering at the rays of sun that filtered between the tightly-packed buildings. Carver was right, though. It wouldn't be long before evening set in. As much confidence as she had in throwing around fire and ice, she'd rather not run into any thugs in a dark alley. If nothing else, it meant less time spent washing out stains from her clothes.

"Perhaps we should try again tomorrow," she said, reaching into the satchel at her hip and pulling out a slip of paper. She furrowed her brow as she looked between it and their surroundings. "I'll check with Meeran again in the morning. It's possible I wrote down the wrong address."

"_Very_ possible."

She shot him a sharp look, resisting the urge to huff and put her hands on her hips as well. As it were, she stuffed the paper back into her bag with a bit more force than necessary as she turned in the direction of home. "I'm not going to argue with you," she said. "Let's just go."

He rolled his eyes but offered no further protest. Thankfully.

As they left, Marian glanced around, searching for the source of that wonderful voice. But by then it was gone, lost amongst the growing noise of merchants closing up their stalls and shoppers making their final selections. With a sigh, she turned her eyes back to the street and resolved to forget about it.

But of course she didn't forget about it. Later that day, as she laid in her thin straw bed trying to sleep, she thought of that voice. She'd heard so little of it, only a sentence or two worth of words, but even that little had been delightful. Like fine, dark chocolate for the ear. She wondered what such a voice would sound like after awakening from a deep sleep or – she blushed to think of it – in the throes of passion. She tried to picture what kind of man its owner was – a dockworker built like a brick house? Or perhaps one of the dwarven tradesmen she saw from time to time? Maybe even an elf, come from one of the Hightown estates to resolve an earlier purchase?

There she hesitated, doubtful. Though understated, the man's tone had been clearly assertive. She couldn't imagine him being anyone's servant, and of all the Alienage elves she knew, most would rather try to forget about such things than try to confront a – richer, more influential, more powerful – merchant.

Or just pocket another item from the trader and call it even.

But perhaps this one man, whose voice could make her melt in the middle of winter, wasn't like that. Wasn't afraid of that. Perhaps didn't even _care_ about that.

What would such a man be like to love? Would he be forceful, claiming her mouth with bruising kisses and dominating her body with determined hands? Or would he be surprisingly gentle, whispering sweet nothings in her ear with that honey-gravel voice as he made love to her?

_Ooh, that's a nice thought_, she mused, blushing hotly at it. She pressed her thighs together as arousal coursed through her. She was tempted to reach down and bring herself to completion with such wanderings, but the snoring forms of her family not even a yard away made her stamp down on the desire.

Frustrated, she rolled onto her side and pulled the scratchy blanket up over her shoulders.

_It's not like it matters anyway_, she thought. Tens of thousands of people lived in Kirkwall, and a hundred or more came and went each day. What chance did she have of ever finding a person – much less someone she'd never even _seen_ – amidst all that?

_Forget about it_, she told herself again.

And, closing her eyes, she tried. Maker knew she tried, but as sleep finally fell upon her, she swore she heard it again in a dream: that breathy timbre softly, ever so softly, trying to whisper a name in her ear.


	2. Chapter 2

Kinks/Warnings: F!Hawke/Fenris pairing, voice.

(I'll get this posted up on the DA kink meme as well. Thanks for reading!)

Did I Hear

_Chapter Two_

The second time Marian heard it, she was sitting at the docks.

In her first few months in Kirkwall, she'd come down to the port often. Between jobs from Meeran, she'd had little else to pass the time with. Too poor to buy the things she needed to draw or paint, too dirty to pass herself off as a noble and browse the wares in Hightown, too low-class to even think of asking for permission to read the books stored within the chantry's vast library. The docks seemed like as good of a place as any to while an afternoon away at. Better than Darktown, at any rate.

Sometimes she'd come to simply watch the boats in the calm water: the oaken cogs owned by smalltime sailors, the merchant hoys from Cumberland, the cargo vessels from Antiva and Orlais, and many others. They creaked and groaned in the breeze, their mass gently rising and falling with the lapping waves, then rising and falling even further with the changing tide. High above, the gulls cut through the sky, piercing the air with their cries, while below the dockworkers toiled, sweat streaking down sun-darkened skin as they tied boats in and hefted cargo to and fro.

Other times she'd come to think, more often to reminisce. Some of her memories were happy, of Lothering in the summer, wheat ripening to yellow under the sun and the laughter of children in the town square. Others, not so much, the wounds still too recent, the pain still too sharp to ignore. She tried to put them out of her mind, to give them the time they needed to heal and scar, but occasionally they would rise back up out of the darkness, and she would break down and weep. Only for a minute or two, and then she would force herself to dry her tears and square her shoulders once more.

At first, Mother and Carver had disapproved of her going. She was an adult with responsibilities and work to do, Mother would tell her. She shouldn't be off alone daydreaming in places where a templar could easily apprehend her. They _worried_ about her. Or at least Mother did; Carver just glowered at her for an hour or two. Uncle Gamlen, if he was even there, showed no sign of caring at all.

But still she continued to slip away when she could (her mabari, Ser Barkley, helped with that, the clever hound). Until her service to Meeran came to an end, and with that newfound freedom came the utter lack of any free time, as all of her hours were devoured in her search for work. Her visits quickly grew fewer and farther between because of that, and also because of the Qunari. They had arrived in the city but a fortnight ago, taking up residence in a walled-off section of the port given to them as a "gift" by the Viscount. For their comfort, or for the populace's, she wasn't sure. A few times she felt a tug of curiosity, but it was tempered by the memory of the one she'd seen in Lothering, a confessed murderer who had killed Bethany's best friends. And so she kept her distance, attentive but wary.

At least they were easy on the eyes.

It was at such a moment of making life a bit easier on her eyes when she heard it, that tantalizing growl of a voice that sent a heat curling down her spine as it muttered with a huff:

"I didn't think this city could smell any worse. Evidently I was wrong."

_You should try Denerim in the summer_, Marian thought with a wry smile. Only to frown the next when she realized, _Oh, shit, he might have seen me ogling the Qunari. He probably thinks I'm a gigantic pervert. Shit, shit, shit._

Well, she was kind of a pervert, but that was beside the point.

She twisted her head this way and that, looking for the source of the voice. It'd been close, very close, perhaps not even several yards away from where she sat. But the docks were crowded, full of people of every race and build grunting and groaning to and fro with boxes in their arms or bags slung over their shoulders, making it impossible to tell who it could have been. She caught sight of a strange shock of white hair in the throng, but it disappeared the next second between two burly men.

By the time the next hint of the voice came – another disgusted, _delicious_ huff of breath – it was further away, barely audible over the solid thumps of footsteps along the wooden planks. She rushed to her feet and jogged after it, desperate to discover its owner. She didn't know if she would actually talk to the man (nor did she know if she wouldn't melt into a puddle at his feet the moment he said "hello"), but she had to _see_. If nothing else, she'd have a face to put to her daydreams at last.

As she did, she passed the man with white hair again. An elf, with tan skin and twining tattoos so bright she swore for a moment that they actually glowed. He was dressed in black leather armor, with a greatsword strapped to his back. A distinctive man, no two ways about it. And very handsome, to boot.

And here she'd been wasting her time on the Qunari.

_Can't be him_, she thought. _Fate's never that nice. It's probably some guy with half of his teeth gone and a face that only a mother could love._

That thought gave her pause. If that were true, did she really want to find the source of the voice? Finding could very well ruin her fantasies, for all she knew. Perhaps it was better to not seek out the man, to be content with the mystery. She considered it.

_Nah_, she decided.

She continued looking, sweeping her gaze back and forth across the crowd, but she met with no luck. Still too many people, and now the voice was silent. She was sorely tempted to just scream out, _All right, who here has the sexy voice?_ But some small part of her remaining decency kept her from doing so, and she kept on her search, growing more frantic with each passing second.

_What is he, a ghost?_ she grumbled to herself. _He can't have just vanished!_

As if her thought had summoned it, she heard the voice again, practically in her ear as a gauntleted hand on her arm gently pushed her a little aside: "Pardon me."

She whipped her head around in the direction of it, her mouth agape and her heart nearly singing in her chest with excitement. Finally, _finally_, after weeks of frustrated, sleepless nights, she would know who possessed that wonderful, sonorous voice. She reached back towards the person and sucked in a breath, hoping to catch the man, to make some sort of excuse to delay him a little, to hear that rich, beautiful timbre just a bit more.

Only to shriek instead when a crate swung out of the sky and knocked her clear off the dock.

It wasn't a hard hit, fortunately, but she couldn't do much about the salt water rushing up to meet her. That, considering the height, was significantly less pleasant.

She sputtered as she surfaced, gasping and clawing at the barnacle-encrusted pier post for some purchase. Despite the mild day, the water was freezing, and hardly had a few moments more passed before she felt herself begin to shiver. She looked up, at once hoping and dreading that the owner of the delicious voice had stayed to watch, perhaps would even be so kind as to help "warm her up" afterwards.

Several dockhands stood peering over the edge, one of whom was quickly lowering a knotted rope down. She squinted at the men as her teeth started to chatter. They didn't look half-bad, a little scruffy around the edges perhaps, but, with a voice like that, she'd honestly put up with a lot worse.

Perhaps it was one of them?

"Shit! Sorry, serah! We'll get you up in a jiff!" one of them – _not_ the voice – shouted down to her.

Another – also _not_ the voice – added, "I'm afraid the crate got away from us as we were hoisting it up, you see. Terribly sorry!"

"It'll be only a moment, serah!" the third one – she could strike him off, too – said. "Just hang on!"

Which left no others, as anyone else watching had already lost interest and continued walking on. Except for the strange elf, who stood for but a moment longer, peering down at her with furrowed brows, until she took hold of the rope and began to drag herself up. The next time she looked, he was gone.

_Well, shit_, she thought. _Even after getting tossed in the sea, I _still_ don't know whose voice it is._

But she did know something else:

Mother was going to be _furious_ with her. And Carver? Oh, she didn't want to even think about him!


End file.
